# Engineering a Scalable, FAIR Data Infrastructure for Resource-Efficient Research

- Institution: CERN
- Speaker: Irufan Ahmed
- Year: 2026
- Language: English
- Subjects: Mathematics
- Source: [CERN](https://videos.cern.ch/record/3025557)
- Licence: [CERN](https://copyright.web.cern)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

The Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London is addressing the environmental and accessibility challenges of modern research by deploying a scalable repository architecture. This system integrates a custom InvenioRDM interface with Ceph object storage to manage massive computational datasets in alignment with FAIR principles. By leveraging software-defined storage on commodity hardware, the department avoids carbon-intensive "forklift upgrades," allowing for sustainable, incremental capacity growth.

The infrastructure features a self-healing, S3-compatible backend designed to eliminate "dark data" through domain-specific metadata curation. To reduce energy consumption associated with unnecessary network egress, the platform supports flexible retrieval, enabling researchers to inspect granular data subsets rather than downloading entire multi-terabyte files. Ultimately, this ecosystem prevents redundant, energy-heavy re-computations by transforming primary data into a permanent, reusable asset. The proposed talk details the lifecycle of this transition from ad-hoc management to an integrated, environmentally conscious research framework.

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## Lectures

1. [Engineering a Scalable, FAIR Data Infrastructure for Resource-Efficient Research](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/cern/3025557/4495dca37277), 28 min (CERN's player)